Wendell Berry, Burkean The farmer-novelist on politics, faith, land, and economy

Modern America knows that divorce is good for business, and a marriage that makes a reasonably productive and self-sufficient household economy is bad for business.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/wendell-berry-burkean/

Clear Thinking on Race

 Take Brown v. Board of Education, the Court’s most important decision in the 20th century. Sowell does not discuss it, but the Court’s unanimous opinion was a mess. With its reliance on the results of an experiment involving black children who showed a preference for white over black dolls, it barely qualified as constitutional reasoning. Let’s leave the Constitution aside: What was the evidence that black children, as a consequence of segregation, acquired “a feeling of inferiority . . . unlikely ever to be undone”? Or that their preference for the white dolls was a sign of low esteem? The doll study had numerous flaws, including the sample size and the lack of a control group. But, most important, a study by the same researcher, Kenneth Clark, found that black children in a northern state without segregated schools were even more likely to prefer the white doll than those in the Jim Crow South.

Read more at: https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/345961/clear-thinking-race

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/05/the_brown_decision_s_doll_test_11_facts.html

http://www.weirdrepublic.com/episode66.htm

In Defense of Christendom

http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-defense-of-christendom-1445296794

Robert McNair Wilson

http://gadetection.pbworks.com/w/page/7932513/Wynne%2C%20Anthony

McNair Wilson and Pound kept up a quarter-century's correspondence, from 1934 to 1959.

http://thepassingtramp.blogspot.com/2012/07/death-of-banker-1934-by-anthony-wynne.html

MW Senior definitely never "embraced Fascism" but he did write a pro-Socialist novel, They Want Their Wages, under the pen name Harry Colindale

Barbarism

It may seem at first sight unjustifiable to describe ancient 
cultures of this kind as barbaric. But barbarism in the sense 
in which we are using the word is by no means the same thing 
as savagery. It is applied to any stage of social develop- 
ment which has not acquired the higher organisation of a 
settled urban and territorial state — in short, to the culture 
of the tribe as against that of the city. The essence of bar- 
baric society is that it rests on the principle of kinship 
rather than on that of citizenship or that of the absolute 
authority of the state. It is true that kinship is not the 
only element in tribal society; in practically every case the 
territorial and the military factors also intervene. But 
whereas in a civilised state the unit is the individual or the 
economic group, the unit of tribal society is the group 
of kinsmen. A man's rights depend not on his direct relation 
to the state, but on his position in the kindred, and in the 
same way crime is not conceived as an offence against the 
state, but as an occasion of feud or negotiation between two 
groups of kinsfolk. The guilt of blood lies on the whole 
kindred of the slayer and must be atoned by compensa- 
tion to the kindred of the slain. It is true that the 
higher political unit of the tribe or clan does not necessarily 
consist of men of common blood, though they are apt to 
claim such unity by some genealogical fiction. It is usu- 
ally a territorial or military union of groups of kinsmen. 
 
https://archive.org/stream/makingofeurope00daws#page/74/mode/2up 

Arrest Made 18 Years After Disappearance of 8-Year-Old Oklahoma Girl Kirsten Hatfield

Kristin is still missing but her family was "hopeful" and "grateful" for news of the arrest, said Chris Hazen, the current husband of Kirsten's mother, Shannon.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/arrest-made-18-years-after-disappearance-8-year-old-oklahoma-n443916

Kirsten was living with her mother, Shannon McCrossan, and younger sister, Faith, at 1108 Jet Drive in Midwest City when she disappeared. McCrossan has told police that Kirsten went to bed about 11:30 p.m. May 13, 1997, but was gone when her mother went to wake her about 6:30 the next morning.

http://newsok.com/article/2613047

For decades, the government steered millions away from whole milk. Was that wrong?

Scientists who tallied diet and health records for several thousand patients over ten years found, for example, that contrary to the government advice, people who consumed more milk fat had lower incidence of heart disease.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/10/06/for-decades-the-government-steered-millions-away-from-whole-milk-was-that-wrong/

Oregon shooter said to have singled out Christians for killing in ‘horrific act of cowardice’

Another account came from Autumn Vican, who described to NBC News what her brother J.J. witnessed in the room where the shootings occurred. According to NBC: “Vicari said at one point the shooter told people to stand up before asking whether they were Christian or not. Vicari’s brother told her that anyone who responded ‘yes’ was shot in the head. If they said ‘other’ or didn’t answer, they were shot elsewhere in the body, usually the leg.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/10/02/oregon-shooter-said-to-have-singled-out-christians-for-killing-in-horrific-act-of-cowardice/

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Continental Divides

One thing we may safely say is that none of the European powers would have embarked on the war if they had known how it would be waged, what its cost would be and how it would end: in exile for the kaiser, death for the czar and his family, over 1.3 million dead for the French. As for the British, Jarausch says, they “wanted to eliminate German competition without too much upsetting the balance of power on the continent,” though in fact they failed to eliminate the competition while utterly upsetting the balance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/books/review/out-of-ashes-by-konrad-h-jarausch.html?_r=0